Pages

9.03.2012

Evolution of the Front of the House

I'd like to tell you that I have been amazingly productive this 3 day weekend. But that is not the case. Instead, this has been my view for the last 3 days

I've been at the A's Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and I'll be there again today (and Wednesday). So while my housework is at a zero, it has been an amazingly fun weekend: the A's have swept the Red Sox and have won 9 in a row, they're within striking distance for the division lead and the atmosphere has just been awesome. The A's have had a lot of fun this year and this weekend especially, which culminated in Terry Kiser who played Bernie in the Weekend at Bernie movies coming to the game, throwing out the first pitch and being celebrated (many players use "Bernie Lean" as their walk up song and it has sort of become and anthem for the A's, they're even in the music video)

Yesterday was also Breast Cancer Awareness day where 500 breast cancer survivors formed a ribbon on the field and were celebrated throughout the game (it's one of my favorite days of the year at the A's)

It's been a pretty awesome 3 days. But I've been too busy to write up posts about how productive Chris has been, so instead, here's a pretty awesome post (at least I think) about the amazing transformation of the front of the house.

When we first moved in, winter of 2009

Then we took down the awful monkey tree. Chris and I have a rule that we don't cut down trees that are older than us unless there is a legitimate reason (and extreme ugliness isn't one. Unfortunately). But when our neighbor let us know the tree was ripping up her driveway we barely let her finish the sentence before we ran for the chainsaw with the help of some friends

About 6 months later in December we got the house re-roofed (by Berkeley Roof Services, who I hate)

The house sat just like that for about 1 1/2 years until April of last year when we started prepping for it to get painted

Then our yard sat with a black tarp over the raised bed for 6 months. And amazingly our neighbors were still wonderfully nice and encouraging the entire time despite the fact that our yard looked like it had garbage on it

It's pretty amazing to see all the crazy stages the front of the house has gone through. And I'm sure our neighbors are happy to not have to look at: a partially dead yard, a partially roofed house, peeling paint, tarps over dirt....the endless list of ugly that the house has gone through. Now it's pretty :)

If you want to see our similarly awesome evolution of the back of the house, check it out here.

Follow us around the web

Contact Us

Hi! We're Chris and Meryl and we're renovating our Storybook home in Oakland, CA. Chris is the handy, knowledgeable builder and I'm his slightly inappropriate assistant. We've got 2 little girls who attempt to help as well - Zoe is 2 and Merritt arrived in June of 2015. Spurred by our love of renovating our own home we started a handyman, design and organizing business and now that we're both self employed we're busier than ever, but we love it!